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There's not a lot known about the ancient tribes that lived where I do. My house (along with many others) sits on a ridge comprised of clams shells from ancient indian mounds. Seems like the hurricanes kept wiping 'em out.
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To estimate the time span of the occupancy of Jefferson County, Texas by aboriginal inhabitants is extremely difficult, but the best available sources indicate a period of 2000 years. Dr. D. J. Millet of McNeese State University, who is an authority on the history of Southwest Louisiana, believes that the Attakapas Indian tribe arrived in that area about the time of the birth of Christ. But the Atakapas never signed any treaties with the federal government of foreign countries. They didn't leave any written histories behind and were diluted by surrounding cultures as time marched on.

The only known and complete Attakapan vase, of which the writer has knowledge, was excavated at Johnson's Bayou, Louisiana, four miles east of Sabine Pass, Texas, in 1970. The curator of anthropology at Louisiana State University has identified the dark brown and beautifully incised artifact as belonging to the "Marksville Culture," dated between the years one and 500 A.D. However, this does not eliminate the possibility that the Attakapas tribe arrived at a later date, and was preceded by other aborigines.

The domain of the Attakapas Indians during the 18th century did not include the locality or political entity known as "Poste des Attakapas" around Lafayette, Louisiana. Instead, this tribe inhabited the region of the Gulf Coast between the San Jacinto River in Texas and Vermillion By, Louisiana to a depth of about thrity miles inland. Tribal traditions held that the Attakapan warriors once were sorely defeated in battle near Saint Martinsville, Louisiana, and thus may have fled to the marsh territories along the coast, which were shunned by other tribes.

The Texas tribes along the Trinity River, the Orcoquisas (Akokisas), Deadose, and Bidais, were marginal Attakapans, who differed from their Louisiana cousins only in their dialet of language. One writer has speculated that it may have been the Orcoquisa tribe that held Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca as a captive in the year 1528. At any rate, the South Texas coast, differing from the latter principally in language and physique, the Karankawas being "tall, well-built, muscular," whereas the Attakapans are described as possessing "bodies stout, stature
short, and heads of large size placed between the shoulders."

From the time of their earliest contact with Europeans, the Attakapas tribe bore the unsavory reputation of being cannibals, and the tribal name does mean "man-eater" in the Choctaw language. This reputation stems principally from an account published in Paris in 1758, which described the adventures of Simars de Belle-Isle, a French naval officer, who was held captive for two years by the Orcoquisa tribe. Belle-Isle denied much of the original account, but a subsequent version published in Paris in 1768 by Jean-Bernard Bossu claimed to have been prepared from Bell-Isle's own manuscript.

Bell-Isle was one of five officers of the French frigate Marechal d'Estees, who went ashore on Galveston Island in 1719 to supervise the filling of water casks. For some unknown reason, the vessel's captain sailed away without them, leaving four to die slowly of starvation, and the sturdier Belle-Isle as the lone survivor. Shortly afterward, he was taken prisoner by a war party of the Orcoquisa tribe. Belle-Isle suffered many indignities, was given as a slave and husband to an old widow, but eventually he was adopted into the tribe as a full-fledged warrior. The Frenchman claimed that the Orcoquisas killed and dried the flesh of Indian prisoners, which was frequently offered to him as food. With the assistance of a friendly Hasinai Indian, Belle-Isle made his escape in 1721, and rejoined the French forces of Louis de Sant Denis at Natchitoches, Louisiana.

Subsequent French officials, Athanase de Mezieres and Jean Baptiste de Bienville, supported Belle-Isle's account, as did the Spaniard Nemesio do Salcedo, but they were quoting from secondary sources. However, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, Bemardo de Galvez, did not hesitate to include 140 Attakapan warriors from Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana in the Spanish army, which attacked British forces along the Mississippi River and in West Florida in 1779. Galvez wrote "the Indian allies, likewise, created no disturbances." Also, French traders continued to barter with the Attakapas tribe throughout the eighteenth century with no apparent fear of being eaten.

Fred Kniffen, a contemporary Attakapan historian, claims that the tribe was "undeserving of their ancient reputation as wandering cannibals." So does Lauren C. Post of San Diego State College, who asked "how did Belle-Isle avoid the pot and spit?" According to Post, no case of Attakapan cannibalism was ever reported during the long period of French and Anglo occupancy of Western Louisiana.

Father Augustin Morfi, a Spanish priest of Nacogdoches, visited the Attakapas villages in Jefferson and Orange counties during 1777. Although he reported objectively on the primitive state of their culture, Morfi made no mention of cannibalism in his journal entry, which follows:

Although the Atacapas [sic] are to be regarded as dependents of Louisiana, they are numbered among the Texas nations because of the ease with which they changed their domicile, particularly since they are united with the Orcoquisas, with whom they form almost a single nation. They are friends of the Carancahuases [sic] whom they accompany whenever they can on their robberies. They live at the mouths of the Nechas and Trinidad Rivers, along whose banks they wander, without a fixed domicile; they neglect the cultivation of their fertile lands, occupy themselves with and live from robbery when they can manage to do so, or from the game which abounds in the forests. The nation is few in number and very cowardly, nor doesn't employ its arms except against beasts or the unfortunates who are shipwrecked.

Father Morfi accompanied Antonio Gil Ybarbo's expedition to Jefferson County in July 1777 to investigate the presence of Englishmen on Spanish soil. At that time, the English surveying sloop Florida was mapping and sounding the Sabine River, Sabine Lake, and the Sabine Pass, and both the English and the Spanish recorded some information about the villages, one on each side of the Neches River near its mouth. He noted that the Indians in the western village had traded with the English on two occasions and "were supplied with the goods." The English map, which shows the wreckage of a Jamaican ship in the Sabine Pass, recorded the rescue of three stranded sailors, and the plundering of the wreck by "the savages."

Although Father Morfi's map identified the Jefferson County Indian village as bing Attakapan, it is possible that it belonged to the Orcoquisa group, for the Bidais tribe once informed Joaquin de Orogio, Spanish captain at Bahia, that the Orcoquisas "occupied the country from the Neches to a point halfway between the Trinity and the Brazos. The lower Neches River Indians were also known by the tribal name of Nacazil. That the Spanish used the names "Orcoquisa" and "Attakapas" almost interchangeably is apparent in a letter to Juan Maria, Baron de Ripperda, a part of which reads:

The Orcoquisa Indian trader has told the captain of Militia...that a stranded English vessel was found in the mouth of the Rio de Nechas and that the English have given presents to the nearby Apelusas and Atakapas Indians. The said captain of militia [Antonio Gil Ybarbo] went at once with thirty of his men...Going directly to the pueblo of the Orcoquisas, he learned from that that the English had withdrawn He went on to inspect this place...with two paid guides from the said orcoquisas...and later came upon the stranded vessel...completely abandoned, although the Atakapas Indians who were supplied with their goods said that the English had left three of their number guard the vessel...

Utilizing Morfi's map and other sources, the evidence at hand strongly indicates that Port Neches, Texas, known earlier as Grigsby's Bluff, was the former site of the Attakapas Indian Village in Jefferson County, and may have been occupied by that tribe for several centuries. In 1841, the Houston Telegraph and Texas Register published an account of the six ancient burial mounds at Grigsby's Plantation, on the west bank of Neches River, 12 miles below Beaumont." The newspaper stated that Joseph Grigsby's slaves had leveled some of the mounds, each twenty feet high, sixty feet wide, and 200 feet long, as a site for Grigsby's residence and barns. The report added that the burial mounds contained strata of seashells interspersed with layers of crude vessels," broken earthenware, human bones, which crumbled to dust as soon as exposed to the air.

Another article confirmed that one of the six mounds survived until 1893. A visiting geologist in that year reported that "the mound at Grigsby's Bluff...is about 150 yards long, from 15 to 20 yards wide, and from 10 to 15 feet high," and contained "remains of human workmanship in the shape of broken pottery, arrow points, etc." An article published in 1905 added that the shells at Grigsby's Bluff "were carried there by the aboriginal settlers of the land. Pieces of human bone and animal have been found there, and speciments of broken pottery, blackened by fire, are found amount the shells." Since the Attakapan village was small, it is logical to assume that many centuries elapsed while the large quantity of conch, clam, and oyster shell, which the Indians had carried by dugout from Sabine Lake, accumulated in the mounds.

When Father Morfi referred to "the ease with which they changed their domicile," he meant that the Attakapans had seasonal, nomadic habits. Typically, the Indians of Jefferson County broke up into small bands during the summer months to occupy the marsh ridges along the coast, where seafood existed in abundance. They lived in communal existence only during the winter months when they paddled back to their village to be near an abundant supply of firewood.

Although Attakapans were adept at use of the bow and arrow, they were unerringly proficient at hurling the fish spear, so much so that the warriors could stab small fish but ten inches long at a distance of twenty paces." They used a shorter dart and torchlight to spear flounders at night, and a rake made from two poles to loosen oysters from the reefs. Still another Attakapan delicacy was alligator meat, which was procured by spearing the reptiles through the eyes. The carcasses were then cooked upon beds of charcoal and heated oyster shells, and incising entrenchments in the flesh around the backbone collected the alligator oil. The oil was used as fuel for lanps made from conch shells and dried moss. The Attakapans also used alligator oil on their bodies to repel mosquitoes, a practice which caused the tribesmen to emit a particularly offensive odor.

One historian - Joseph O Dyer of Lake Charles, Louisiana - believed that the Attakapans obtained their pottery from the Caddo tribes to the north, and their "conical of globular oil jugs from the Karankawas." If this is true, then their intertribal trade was extensive, for the shores of Sabine Lake are still lined with broken shards of Attakapa pottery, the most frequently found vestige of their erstwhile existence. Also illogical is the belief that the Attakapans were forced to obtain their oil jugs from the Karankawas, a tribe whose culture was equally primitive. While the Attakapans undoubtedly obtained some of their pottery through barter, evidence observed by the writer has indicated that the tribe could heat their cooking pits to white-hot temperatures sufficient for firing clay, an abundance of which exists throughout Jefferson County. Whether of their own workmanship or not, existent shards indicate that Attakapan pottery was often of large size, up to five-gallon capacity, and that it was well-fired and utilitarian. Although not ornate in appearance, it was often attractively incised.

As is often the case with primitive cultures, the Attakapans had a complex assortment of tribal traditions and social customs. Their rules regarding bigamy and incest were similar to those of Anglo-Americans. Attakapans practiced a nature religion and believed that their ancestors had originated in the sea. Tribal fathers changed their names at the birth of the first child, becoming "father of" plus the name of the child. If the child died, the original name was resumed.

In general, women held a much inferior position in the village. Because males outnumbered females, Attakapans sometimes bartered for wives with other tribes. They may have unwittingly practiced infant skull deformation because of the type of headrest that they used. Women performed all menial labor, including the building of the elevated shell mound where the chief's abode was constructed. Female attire was simple, a deer skin with a neck hole in the center and gathered with thongs at the waist. During pregnancy, mothers-to-be were isolated in a single hut in the village and cared for by the older women in the tribe.

Attakapan tribal structure was extremely loose with no centralized authority. Each local chief ruled his village and the waters adjacent to it. During the mid-eighteeneth century the chiefs of the four Orcoquisa "rancherias," or villages, were named Canoes, El Gordo, Mateo, and Calzones Colorados. In Southwest Louisiana, the once large Attakapan village on Lacassine River was abandoned in 1799, and the Indians moved to the Mermentau River village. In 1819, the last Attakapan village in the Lake Charles Louisiana vicinity" contained forth miserable, dirty huts, the chiefs and shaman's being on an oyster mound, and somewhat larger in size."

From existent lexicons of their language, Dr. Herbert E. Bolton was able to establish that the lower Trinity River tribes were actually Attakapan in derivation, not Caddoan as had been previously thought, and that their language contained only minute dialectal differences from the language of the eastern Attakapans. In 1885, Dr. Albert Gatschet utilized two old squaws to prepare a vocabulary of the language spoken in the Lake Charles vicinity. Jean Berenger, a French sea captain, prepared a similar vocabulary from members of the Orcoquisa tribe. "which differed but slightly from the dialet of Lake Charles."

In an account by O.B. Faulk, in The Last Years of Spanish Texas, he noted that in 1806, three hundred Attakapan families petitioned for and received permission from the Spanish to re-settle in Texas on the northern waters of the Sabine River.

Exactly how and when the Attakapas tribe vanished from Jefferson County may always remain an unsolved mystery, but the writer believes that their disappearance was rapid and possibly calamitous in nature. Florence Stratoon, in the Story of Beaumont, recounted the tales of elderly persons, who claimed that mounted Indians still existed in the county as late as 1860.

The word Attakapan or Attackapaw is of Muskoegean dialect. It is from "Hatek" meaning man, and "upa" meaning "to eat" or "food" (interchangably).

Their lingustics group is the same as most of the coastal tribes and believe it or not probably Souian in lineage, like the Tunica in Southern Louisiana. It was often thought a dead dialect.

However, Back in the 60's Dr. Pete Gregory from Northwestern state Univ., was called to do an oral history on two Black/ Creole WWII vets who lived in the south of Louisiana. They both spoke a native dialect that was later identified by Dr. Gregory as Attackapaw (from written words collected by the colonial French).

My neck of the woods was either Biadi or Deadose and I think the latter. I have a few shards of pottery i've found, not sure what except it ain't Caddo.

I took an Anthropology course at NSU under Dr. Gregory. Enjoyed it.

I intend to!!

Used to do a lot of work with Dr. Pete back in the day. He retired about 5 years ago. Oldest son worked for him too, while at NSU. He's a very cool guy!

When we went by Ft. Lancaster we were the only visitors. Had along interesting talk with the Park Ranger. I recommend a visit, especially if on the road to Palo Duro.

Thanks Doc good read

It is hard for us to grasp exactly what these Texas guys looked like.

Beards and long hair are mentioned alot, these guys were young and single for the most part after all. Attire from all over the map: Trousers and shirts with buttons one would assume, but frequent mention is made of leggings, mocassins and breechclouts, especially on long scouts after reg'lar clothes had worn out.

Serapes are mentioned, and IIRC Smithwick traded a fine cloak with a red velvet lining for the mule he skipped town on in 1839. The one given being a broad-brimmed hat. But even that weren't a given according to Smithwick. I would argue it sure as heck would have been for anyone who spent much time in the open.

The weaponry, like the clothing styles a mix of things we popularly associate with other more famous time periods. Muzzleloading rifles still the primary offersive/defensive weapon, prob'ly at least half still flinters in 1840. Mention of multiple pistols being carried too.

Alongside flinlocks of a sort instantly familiar to a Daniel Boone, caplock technology was moving in, and the first generation of revolving arms, which must have seemed practically space-age (remember that term?) at the time.

Besides firearms, knives were general of course, and mention is made as late as 1861 of tomahawks as common implements carried by Texas Rangers.

Must be an easy period to re-enact for, basically anything ya got from other periods would fit SOMEWHERE in this era

Weren't your average guy on these things either.

Accounts dating from the Mexican War on mention wild-looking, heavily armed and mounted Texans. But compared to their apparent numbers, hardly any of these guys ventured out into the wilds of Comancheria. Odd but apparently true, even those guys were blocked by that "impenetrable wall of Comanche violence".

So why were these guys commonly armed to the teeth?

I'm gonna quote one John D. McAdoo, in 1864 appointed Brigadier General in charge of keeping the peace and preserving order in the Sixth Military Distict. Here he is commenting on conditions around Fredericksburg at that time (as given in Smith "Frontier Defense in the Civil War"...

I found almost the entire population of a large part of the district laboring under the greatest excitement. Within a few months, twenty men had perished by violence. Some had been waylaid and shot; others taken from their homes at the dead hour of midnight and hung, and their houses robbed; and some had been mobbed and murdered in jail and in irons.

No man felt secure-even at home. The Indians seemed to be the least talked of, the least thought of, and the least dreaded of all the evils that threatened and afflicted the Frontier.

Now granted, this was during the war, but a number of areas of Texas had been noted for lawlessness, fueds and assorted violence for years, before and after that war. And most of them many armed guys on horses simply were not chasing Wild Indians.

Might be the driving force on BOTH sides of the Frontier was simple profit. Most White folks weren't voluntarily putting their lives at risk UNLESS there was money to be made. People set out boldly across Comancheria often enough in '49 on their way to the Gold Rush, RIP Ford even writing about encountering single travellers on foot crossing the plains.

On the Comanche side; small parties continued their lucrative raids on the settlements, steady immigration likely providing an ever-increasing pool of potential victims. But these raids were stealthy and quick, followed immediately by a rapid retreat.

We know the BIG raids during the '40's and 50's were pointed south, into Mexico. Easy for us to view Comanches the same way we popularly view Vikings; all raiding, all the time. Perhaps things weren't that simple with the Comanches any more than we know they weren't with the Vikings.

The big, lucrative raids into Mexico make perfect sense if we put them in the context of the economic and social forces operating on Comanche society as outlined by Hamanlienen in "Comanche Empire".

Anyhoo... back to John Henry Moore.

Captain Moore deserves far more fame than he apparently has at present. By 1840 he had been chasing and fighting Indians for nearly twenty years.

Two years later, at age 42, he would again be prominent in opposing Woll's invasion from Mexico, twenty-five years later he would lose most all of his considerable accumulated material wealth in the defeat of '65, but succeed in rebuilding his fortunes at the age in life that most of us would call retirement.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fmo30

Given his extensive experience, it seems no accident that Moore's expedition went as well at it did. To appreciate exactly HOW deep into Comancheria he snuck his 100 men in October/November of 1840 you have to peruse the map below.



About 250 miles northwest of Austin as the crow flies, a 500 mile round-trip, through the midst of perhaps the most populous and powerful tribe in North America at that time.

But let us not forget it was a small group of Lipan Apaches what snuck him in.

Birdwatcher

"So why were these guys commonly armed to the teeth? I'm gonna quote one John D. McAdoo, in 1864 appointed Brigadier General in charge of keeping the peace and preserving order in the Sixth Military Distict. Here he is commenting on conditions around Fredericksburg at that time (as given in Smith "Frontier Defense in the Civil War"..."

Yet in the Fremantle diary which recounts Lt. Col Arthur Freemantle's journey to the "seat of the war" in 1863 in his recounting of the portion of his trip from Mexico to San Antonio he mentions that one settlemnet (Oakville?) there were no functioning guns in the community. Guess it depended on who and where you were.

Carry on.

"Ahem...."

Clearly the folks in Oakville were all Liberals.....


...or maybe they had broke them nonfunctioning guns in hard use.

Ford reports that same problem with revolvers in the 1850's, he and his men resorting to Mississippi rifles in their fights with Comanches.

Don't know but old Arthur says the women were begging to buy snuff as they had none.
Probably were liberal though.

And most of the menfolk off to war too.

I confess, I woulda brung extra snuff.....

Is that where the expressiong "being up to snuff" came from?

...and exactly the same sort of thinking coulda got me offed by the Comanches too....

Nahh all you would have had to of done was holler "Hold on boys while I load my lip", they'd of waited on you.

"Ahem" again....

A little known side of old-time doctoring, this being all I care to dwell on the matter, in fact I ain't even gonna provide the link...

As Forestus suggests here, in the Western medical tradition genital massage to orgasm by a physician or midwife was a standard treatment for hysteria, an ailment considered common and chronic in women.

Descriptions of this treatment appear in the Hippocratic corpus, the works of Celsus in the first century A.D., those of Aretaeus, Soranus, and Galen in the second century, that of �etius and Moschion in the sixth century, the anonymous eighth- or ninth-century work Liber de Muliebria, the writings of Rhazes and Avicenna in the following century, of Ferrari da Gradi in the fifteenth century, of Paracelsus and Par� in the sixteenth, of Burton, Claudini, Harvey, Highmore, Rodrigues de Castro, Zacuto, and Horst in the seventeenth, of Mandeville, Boerhaave, and Cullen in the eighteenth, and in the works of numerous nineteenth-century authors including Pinel, Gall, Tripier, and Briquet.

Given the ubiquity of these descriptions in the medical literature, it is surprising that the character and purpose of these massage treatments for hysteria and related disorders have received little attention from historians.

Maybe really missing a dip of snuff qualified as one of them "related disorders" I dunno.

Historians doubtless give the matter little attention on account of, like me, they'd much rather dwell on the specifics of shootings, stabbings, war and general mayhem.

Far less excrutiating

Birdwatcher

Cows, Moore brung cows, to act as a self-propelled comissary.

Left Austin on October 5th 1840 with ninety White men and seventeen Lipan Apaches under Chief Castro, basically the very same bunch of Indians that hung out at Smithwick's forge at Webber's Prairie, that had ridden with Smithwick and Moore to the San Saba in '39, and who would fight alongside Jack Hays over the following two years.

We know that undue haste going in weren't considered essential, if we accept the fact that the cows would have limited them to about ten miles per day.

If haste weren't essential, a screen of competent scouts apparently was if surprise were to be achieved, the Lipans fanning out ahead of and on either side of the expedition, functioning as the eyes and ears of the enterprise.

Must have been Texas was colder back then, Smithwick wrote of horss actually freezing to death one night a year earlier on the way to the San Saba fight. On this 1840 expedition the party encountered "icy winds and bitterly cold rain", which as it turned out may actually have helped them creep up on the Comanches unseen.

It prob'ly comes as no surprise to modern day Natives at least that Indians back then may have loved and cared for their friends and relatives much as we take for granted aong ourselves today. We get an illustration of this in "Savage Frontier"....

The Moore expedition followed the valley of the Colorado River without encountering any Indians. It became very apparent to the men that they were in "Indian territory". Along the river, they found curious Indian pictographs painted on the rocks [IIRC, near modern-day Paint Rock, TX].

On the morning of October 23rd, Castro and Flacco's Lipan scouts found signs along the trail where Comanches had been cutting pecan trees for fruit. Moore then sent two of his best Lipan scouts out that day while his men tried to stay warm. They took shelter underneath a hill, trying to duck the howling, bitter north wind.

The scouts departed about 10:30am and remained gone all day. As evening approached, Chief Castro grew very concerned over the safety of his scouts. He climbed a high hill nearby to stand as a lookout for his men. He soon informed the Texans that they were returning at a distance of about two or three miles.

Castro read their shield signal an relayed their mission had been successful in finding Commanches.

Castro and Flacco's story would bear a sad postcript two years hence, as related by Smithwick....

http://www.lsjunction.com/olbooks/smithwic/otd16.htm

When late in the summer of 1842 Somervell organized his expedition against Mexico, Young Flacco was employed to accompany the army in the capacity of scout. Taking a deaf mute Lipan, whose sense of sight was peculiarly acute, young Flacco led the van, bearing an honorable part in all the engagements along the Rio Grande, for which he and his companion were allotted a liberal share of the spoils taken, consisting mostly of guns, ammunition, horses and blankets, the things that an Indian most prizes.

When the company divided at Laredo, a portion returning home, the Indians accompanied the returning party. The mute was taken sick on the Medina river and he and Flacco stopped while the white men went on. The next morning two of the white men, Tom Thernon and another, were missing and were seen in Seguin a few days later with Flacco's horses. Upon investigation the Indians were found murdered.

The whites were greatly alarmed over the consequences of the dastardly outrage, knowing that, if the Lipans learned of it they would take indiscriminate revenge on the settlers. I had a gunshop in Webber's Prairie, where the friendly Indians were wont to congregate, and as they spoke very little English, using the Spanish language in their intercourse with the whites, I, having acquired a fair knowledge of the latter tongue, was often appealed to in matters of importance.

Old Flacco and his wife were often at my house, bringing presents of game and little beaded moccasins for my little boy. So, when the old chief learned that the expedition had got in, and his son did not return, he became uneasy and came to me to make inquiries. I dared not tell him the truth. He then requested me to write to President Houston and General Burleson about it.

In due course of time the answer came stating that young Flacco and his companion had been murdered by Mexican bandits. There was also a letter from Senor Antonio Navarro, who was a trusted friend of the Lipans, corroborating the sad tale. General Houston tendered his sympathy to the old chief and his tribe.

Armed with these documents I proceeded to the Lipan camp about thirty miles distant. It was a delicate mission, for I knew that old Flacco idolized his son, who was indeed a noble young chief. I interpreted such portions of the letters as I deemed expedient, being very careful to leave no room for doubt as to the Mexican robber story.

Having on several occasions been witness to the stoical fortitude with which an Indian accepts the inevitable, I was not prepared for the touching manifestation of human feeling that followed the reading of those letters. I had not supposed an Indian warrior would under any circumstances be guilty of such womanish weakness as to weep. I had heard the loud lamentations with which they were wont to bewail their dead, but here was a sorrow too strong to be repressed, too genuine for noisy demonstration. Tears rained down the old man's face while sobs fairly shook his frame. I felt how useless words were in such a crisis. I could only express my sympathy by the tears that welled up to my own eyes.

When the first violence of the shock had spent itself, the stricken father, in broken voice, thanked me and those who had so kindly expressed their sympathy in writing. Then said he: "It has always been our custom to destroy everything belonging to the dead, but my son was the white man's friend and I want to do with his things as white men do."

"Then," said I, "keep them yourself."

"O no, no," he replied, "I don't want them where I can see them. It makes me sorry. I want to forget."

"Well, give them to his friends, then."

He then brought out the rawhide box in which young Flacco kept his uniform, only donning it on occasions of ceremony. I insisted that he should at least retain that. I never knew what disposition he made of it. A few days after he sent in four head of horses which had belonged to his son. There was a saddle horse for myself, a mare and colt for General Burleson, and a young mustang which young Flacco had caught and trained for General Houston, who wanted it to send to a friend in Tennessee.

Several days later old Flacco and his wife came to see us. They had starved themselves till they were like mummies. The old man looked so broken, I tried to dissuade him from further fasting. My wife, touched by the sorrow which "makes the whole world kin," prepared dinner for them and induced them to partake of it, after which they seemed to feel better, and soon left.

It was the last time I ever saw them, as the tribe shortly after left the country going out toward the Rio Grande, and I believe are now extinct. There was but a small remnant of the band at that time, about sixty warriors, but, had they known how young Flacco died, they would have declared war to the death against the whites, and, as often has been the case, the crime of one miserable wretch would have caused the death of hundreds of innocent people.

Interesting to note that Smithwick wrote those sixty Lipans could have killed "hundreds" of people.

Anyhoo... as it turned out, old Castro died later that very same year, perhaps of grief I dunno...

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fca92

Birdwatcher

It is a fact often overlooked that everybody everywhere and at all times wants certain things. They want something to eat when they are hungry, something to drink when thirsty, to be warm when it is cold and cool when it is hot. Loss makes them sad and gain makes them happy.

Just how they go about getting those things differs as to culture but the wants and needs are still the same.

As much as I joke you about being an "Comanche appologist" I still do recognize that a man who can heap living coals of fire on another mans privates and rejoice about doing so can still be an honored and upright member of his own society hailed by all.

Got to remember that. Society and cultures are different but wants and needs are the same.

John Henry Moore, admirable and dynamic as he otherwise was, built his fortune on slaves and the dealing thereof. Heck, fer all I know some of his chattel were even "contented" or some such most of the time, but even under the best of circumstance it cant have been all sweetness and light in that foul endeavor.

It can be said "everybody did it", but everybody didn't, Smithwick for one, nor many of the Hill Country Germans for others, the Germans' strong moral objection to the pactice being part of what got lots of 'em lynched and hung in the war years. And RIP Ford, though he had no problem with the practice, doesn't seem to have chosen to make a living at it either.

A lifetime of chattel slavery versus one or two days of hot coals piled on my crotch? (after which I'd not be needing my earthly johnson anyway) Prob'ly I'd opt for the latter but of course would druther have neither.

Historical populations were composed of individuals, just like today, some nicer than others. Smithwick seems manifestly a nice person, and an exceedingly courageous one at that, but he'd be nary even a footnote today were it not for his daughter transcribing his story to keep him occupied at the very end of his long life.

For future reference on this thread I was trying to dredge up info on one Dr Jacob J Sturm, variously described as a "humanitarian", "doctor", and "agricultural specialist". His assiciation with Indians going back at least as far as the 1850's Brazos Reservation years.

Hardly remembered today, prob'ly on account of the fact that he maybe killed even less people than Smithwick did. But whoever he was he picked up fluent Comanche and was trusted by both sides enough that, at the very end, McKenzie chose him to go find Quanah Parker with an offer of amnesty if he would bring his Comanches in. Sturm being familiar and trusted enough by even the militant faction that he could ride out to their camp and not only not get killed but also get respectfully listened to.

While looking for info on Sturm, I came across this, the biography of just a regular Indian who survived it all, fascinating in its own right...

Minco I.T March 22, 1901

Rufus Oliphant

The old man is dead. He died at Doc. Sturm's place on Cobb creek, in the Wichita reservation, on Friday, March 2, 1901, though a continual resident and quiet participant in all matters of this county for more than forty years past, his history is difficult to get at with any accuracy. Everyone in the county knew him, while but few, if any at all, knew where or when he was born and can tell but little of his early life.

The probabilities are that he was born and reared in eastern Texas, the date of his birth being about 1831, and dying at the age of 70 years, but this is all based on uncertain data, though the best obtainable at present.

Away back in 1858 there was an Indian agency at Fort Cooper, on the Clear Fork of the Brazoe river in Texas, for the friendly band of Pen-nah-tekka Comanches and other Indians, at which agency Dr Shirley was then a licensed trader. There Rufus Oliphant appears for the first time we can guess at his history. He was then a young man in his full vigor of life.

He was given employment by Dr Shirley in keeping a farm not far from the agency. About 1859 the scattered bands of the Wichita tribe were ordered to return to their old home on the Washita river, where a remnant of them forever abided, and the Pen-nah-tekka Comanches fell in with the movement and were given a place near by. Fort Cobb was established on Cobb creek near where it empties into the Washita river, and an agency was located a few miles further down the river on a beautiful plateau at what is now known as the mouth of Lepper creek.

Dr Shirley came on with the Indians, leaving his affairs in the hands of Rufus Oliphant for the time. Later on Rufus showed up at the new agency, followed by Dr Shirley's family. Rufus obtained employment about the agency and remained.

In October of 1862, while the Civil War was on, a band of rebellious Indians destroyed the agency, killed several people, and ran the Indian agent, Leeper, out of the country never to return. The occasion of this massacre and riot was a time of peril to all, and the whites and friendly Indians sought refuge as it could be found.

The Shirley family escaped and took refuge at old Cherokee town, a few miles below Paul's Valley on the Washita River. No one knew where anyone was, nor weather dead or alive, but Rufus found his way safely to the same refuge, and was considered a member of the doctor's family from that time up to about 1870.

After the war was over, Dr Shirley was again in business with his brother, Wm. Shirley, at what is now known as the old Wichita agency just north of Anadarko, and also had business interests at old Cherokee town. Dr Shirley died in 1875, from the effects of a dose of mistaken medicine, while at the Anadarko agency,

But several years previous to this Rufus had made the acquaintance of Doctor Strum, a white man married to a Caddo woman, and had gone to make his home on the banks of Cobb creek. Here Rufus, lived, and worked until the day of his death, March 1, 1901.

Peace be to his memory. He was a kindly man, with malice toward none.


Birdwatcher